Wii U Internal Storage Upgrades are possible

[gorgyrip]

So the mlc can now be rebuilded. Hope to see that for the slc, too.

 

[ColdBlitz]

Thanks to the amazing work of @SDIO, @shinyquagsire23, @GaryOderNichts, and others, we've now proven that it's possible to upgrade the internal storage on the Wii U. I'm not talking about soldering to the USB ports, this is honest-to-goodness System Memory of sizes other than 8/32GB.

No, it is NOT ready for endusers yet. The process is still pretty hacky, actually; and more refinement needs to be done before it's reasonable for non-devs to try.

Known caveats:

• Online is completely broken (including game updates) - this is being worked on!
• Your console must be de_Fused, which also means switching SD cards during boot if you want more than 2GB SD space
• Quotas are missing, so filling up your storage all the way will cause the system to misbehave

Credits (so far!):

• @SDIO - worked hard to make a console up and running from blank storage, wrote patches to install the OS, and more! basically behind the whole endeavor
• @shinyquagsire23 - made de_Fuse modchip which makes any of this possible to develop, disc drive disable patch (used for SATA board)
• @GaryOderNichts - disabled MLC size limits, disabled SCFM caches, bypassed the many, many crashes in the bootstrapping process. also UDPIH turned out to be very helpful
• @QuarkTheAwesome - SATA adapter board, initial MLC formatting patch

I will add more people once their contributions are ready to show

@SDIO's console; 512GB SD card via @Voultar's NAND-AID:

View attachment 381270

My own console, 120GB SATA SSD via still-in-development adapter board. Note this removes the optical drive.

View attachment 381271

My own console, 1TB hard drive (this is how I'm gonna keep it until I can get a not-garbage SSD):

View attachment 381273
View attachment 381274

Coming soon™!

this is great for preservation since I heard some wii u's have had a broken mlc

 

[sonictopfan]

This is incredible

 

[SDIO]

Also if I'm going to need to open my console and replace my eMMC and/or disc drive, I don't see why I wouldn't want to install de_Fuse

A few downsides to defuse are, that it takes extra time to boot, at the moment requires an 2GB sd and might introduce instability or compatibility problmes. And you newer know if Nintendo maybe pushes out an update again.

In the beginning you were limited to 8 & 32gb and for awhile the devs thought this was a hard cap put in by Nintendo. Obviously, this is no longer the case.

IOSU has code in it for 64GB so technically thats where nintendo set the cap. We just didn't know how to set it up till now.

"tools" is a bit of an overstatement, it's more like "one de_Fuse payload to format, another to install all the titles, then UDPIH to trigger a factory reset, then a third de_Fuse payload to actually boot the console up". It likes to crash a lot during the factory reset

I have one payload to format and install, which is enough for up to 64GB or SATA up to 2TB. It also triggers the factory reset (so I don't need UDPIH). To boot mlc above 64GB I need a second payload which gets applied at every boot.
Also I didn't have problems with the factory reset crashing.

Also, can this be applied to a non booting/starting Wii U without a NAND backup?

Depends on what is broken, this will fix any problem related to the mlc. If you messed up the slc this won't help you for now.

Would it theoretically be possible to use the internal storage for vWii too?

No, vWii is on it's own SLC. The only exception are VC injects of course

So the mlc can now be rebuilded. Hope to see that for the slc, too.

Is there a need for slc rebuilds? Never saw a console bricked because of slc. Also everyone should have a backup of that, as it is only 528MB

this is great for preservation since I heard some wii u's have had a broken mlc

That's how it all started... Without my Wii Us eMMC breaking I wouldn't have looked into it.

 

[gorgyrip]

Is there a need for slc rebuilds? Never saw a console bricked because of slc. Also everyone should have a backup of that, as it is only 528MB

Mine. Blinking blue light. the slc went bad and slc/sys/title/00050010/10004009/code/fw.img is corrupted.

 

[SDIO]

That should be fixable. We have tools to inject file content into the slc. If you do a dump, you could just try to inject a good fw.img there. Alternativly defuse also has a way to load a fw.img from the sdcard. So that could get you booted up and then you could reinstall IOSU. Asuming that's the only corruption you have. If you have a thread, tag me there, if not I would suggest you open a thread and we can have a look.

 

[Valery0p]

That should be fixable. We have tools to inject file content into the slc. If you do a dump, you could just try to inject a good fw.img there. Alternativly defuse also has a way to load a fw.img from the sdcard. So that could get you booted up and then you could reinstall IOSU. Asuming that's the only corruption you have. If you have a thread, tag me there, if not I would suggest you open a thread and we can have a look.

He posted some logs here if you want to take a look, there are also some other users with de_Fuse trying to recover their consoles in that thread:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/de_fuse...lopment-by-shinyquagsire.630931/post-10139091

I think his firmware version wasn't fully supported by de_Fuse/stroopwafel? IDK

 

[gorgyrip]

That should be fixable. We have tools to inject file content into the slc. If you do a dump, you could just try to inject a good fw.img there. Alternativly defuse also has a way to load a fw.img from the sdcard. So that could get you booted up and then you could reinstall IOSU. Asuming that's the only corruption you have. If you have a thread, tag me there, if not I would suggest you open a thread and we can have a look.

Thank you!
Here's the link with everything i have done so far.
https://gbatemp.net/threads/de_fuse...lopment-by-shinyquagsire.630931/post-10197519

 

[AlamosIT]

Wii U >> Switch

 

[QuarkTheAwesome]

Updated OP with more details on which storages do and don't require de_Fuse, plus online is fixed, and quotas are solved! Credits to @V10lator for quotas, great work

@Lazr1026 you got pics of your setup? I'll add 'em to the OP

 

[Lazr1026]

@QuarkTheAwesome​

 

[Valery0p]

For NAND-AIDs above 64GB, your console must be de_Fused, which also means switching SD cards during boot if you want more than 2GB SD space

@QuarkTheAwesome could you remove the second part?

That is not the only solution btw, the RPi could also send those 64KBs to the SD bus...

Also reminder De_Fuse can be installed solderlessly using the testpoints and some jigs, see my earlier post, but I don't see why you wouldn't want it in your console if you are going to thinker with the storage.

 

[QuarkTheAwesome]

@QuarkTheAwesome could you remove the second part?

That is not the only solution btw, the RPi could also send those 64KBs to the SD bus...

Also reminder De_Fuse can be installed solderlessly using the testpoints and some jigs, see my earlier post, but I don't see why you wouldn't want it in your console if you are going to thinker with the storage.

Last I checked this feature has not actually been implemented yet? I'd love to be wrong here because the SD swap is a bit fiddly.

 

[SDIO]

He is just telling there it's possible. But from what I know it's not implemented yet. Hope it will get implemented soon, because being stuck with a 2GB SD if you want a larger mlc is a real bummer

 

[Ysecond]

May I ask, Is the marking of TX RX correct?

 

[SDIO]

That's something @QuarkTheAwesome could know.

Btw, the tutorial is out: https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-upgrading-rebuilding-wii-u-internal-memory-mlc.636309/

 

[QuarkTheAwesome]

May I ask, Is the marking of TX RX correct?

A/B +/- looks good to me yeah; not sure if the A->TX matchup is correct

 

[Ysecond]

A/B +/- looks good to me yeah; not sure if the A->TX matchup is correct

Got it,！
let me do more experiments

 

[depaul]

Great work.
Wondering : Can this help achieve greater speed than WiiU's USB 2.0? I mean, if we load the game from internal.

 

[Valery0p]

Somewhat related, a really promising discovery:


(Tldr: shiny is researching that chip because it ***could*** in theory be used to self glitch your WiiU, much like RGH3, without a permanent de_Fuse install. Forgive my HYPE